I'm compiling information for our next Adelaide .NET User Group meetup which is focusing on the launch of .NET 6 and Visual Studio 2022.

Way back in February 2021, the major themes were outlined for ASP.NET Core in .NET 6. They were:

  • Hot reload: Quickly make UI and code updates to running apps without losing app state for faster and more productive developer experience.
  • Micro APIs: Simplify building API endpoints with much less code and ceremony.
  • Single-file publishing: Build small, standalone, high-performance apps and services.
  • WebAssembly ahead-of-time (AoT) compilation: Compile .NET code in Blazor WebAssembly apps directly to WebAssembly when publishing for significantly improved runtime performance.
  • Updated single-page app (SPA) support Update SPA integration in ASP.NET Core to work seamlessly with the latest modern front-end JavaScript frameworks.
  • Blazor hybrid desktop apps: Combine the best of Blazor and .NET Multi-platform App UI to build cross-platform hybrid desktop apps.
  • HTTP/3: Add support for HTTP/3 and QUIC in ASP.NET Core supported servers.

Each preview then went on to incrementally work towards these goals:

Preview 1

  • Support for IAsyncDisposable in MVC
  • DynamicComponent
  • Input ElementReference exposed on relevant components
  • Nullable reference type annotations

Preview 2

  • Razor compiler updated to use source generators
  • Support for custom event arguments in Blazor
  • CSS isolation for MVC Views and Razor Pages
  • Infer component generic types from ancestor components
  • Preserve pre-rendered state in Blazor apps
  • SignalR – Nullable annotations

Preview 3

  • Smaller SignalR, Blazor Server, and MessagePack scripts
  • Enable Redis profiling sessions
  • HTTP/3 endpoint TLS configuration
  • Initial .NET Hot Reload support
  • Razor compiler no longer produces a separate Views assembly
  • Shadow-copying in IIS
  • Vcpkg port for SignalR C++ client
  • Reduced memory footprint for idle TLS connections
  • Remove slabs from the SlabMemoryPool
  • BlazorWebView controls for WPF & Windows Forms

Preview 4

  • Introducing minimal APIs
  • Async streaming
  • HTTP logging middleware
  • Use Kestrel for the default launch profile in new projects
  • IConnectionSocketFeature
  • Improved single-page app (SPA) templates
  • .NET Hot Reload updates
  • Generic type constraints in Razor components
  • Blazor error boundaries
  • Blazor WebAssembly ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation
  • .NET MAUI Blazor apps
  • Other performance improvements

Preview 5

  • .NET Hot Reload updates for dotnet watch
  • ASP.NET Core SPA templates updated to Angular 11 and React 17
  • Use Razor syntax in SVG foreignObject elements
  • Specify null for Action and RenderFragment component parameters
  • Reduced Blazor WebAssembly download size with runtime relinking
  • Configurable buffer threshold before writing to disk in Json.NET output formatter
  • Subcategories for better filtering of Kestrel logs
  • Faster get and set for HTTP headers
  • Configurable unconsumed incoming buffer size for IIS

Preview 6

  • Improved Blazor accessibility
  • Required Blazor component parameters
  • Efficient byte array transfers for JavaScript interop
  • Optional parameters for view component tag helpers
  • Angular template updated to Angular 12
  • OpenAPI support for minimal APIs
  • Inject services into minimal APIs without [FromServices] attribute
  • Configure the accept socket for Kestrel
  • IHttpActivityFeature
  • Long running activity tag for SignalR connections
  • WebSocket compression
  • SignalR WebSockets TestServer support
  • New OnCheckSlidingExpiration event for controlling cookie renewal
  • ClientCertificateMode.DelayCertificate

Preview 7

  • Parity with existing experiences for minimal APIs
  • Added IResult implementations for producing common HTTP responses
  • Support Request, Response and User for minimal actions
  • Minimal host and template improvements
  • Supply Blazor component parameters from the query string
  • Replace the current URI in the browser history from Blazor
  • New DynamicComponent.Instance property
  • Blazor streaming interop from JavaScript to .NET
  • Large file upload & faster file uploads with Blazor
  • Modify HTML <head> content from Blazor components
  • Support for the multiple attribute on <select> elements in Blazor
  • Support for HTTP/3 in Kestrel
  • QUIC support moved to the shared framework
  • Allow control over Activity creation
  • Support for non-ASCII characters in Kestrel response headers
  • Add W3CLogger
  • Add authentication expiration option to SignalR

Release Candidate 1

  • Render Blazor components from JavaScript
  • Blazor custom elements
  • Manipulate the query string from Blazor
  • .NET to JavaScript streaming
  • PageX and PageY in MouseEventArgs
  • Blazor templates updated to set page titles
  • Disabled long-polling transport for Blazor Server
  • Collocate JavaScript files with pages, views, and components
  • JavaScript initializers
  • Customize Blazor WebAssembly packaging
  • Template improvements
  • Minimal API updates
  • Support for Latin1 encoded request headers in HttpSysServer
  • Emit KestrelServerOptions via EventSource event
  • Add timestamps and PID to ASP.NET Core Module logs
  • New DiagnosticSource event for rejected HTTP requests
  • Create a ConnectionContext from an Accept Socket
  • Streamlined HTTP/3 setup
  • Upgrade to Duende Identity Server

In addition to these regular previews, two other blog posts were published that relate to ASP.NET Core 6: